NASA's OSIRIS REx Mission Ends Up With More Than It Expected

8 months ago
4

NASA's OSIRIS REx spacecraft was supposed to grab a sample of the asteroid Bennu so that it could be returned to Earth for analysis. The spacecraft grabbed the sample on Tuesday, but, it's taken a few days to actually get photos of the tool and now it's realized they have a problem with too much material. Larger pieces of regolith have kept the sample head from closing properly, so material is slowly being lost.
As a result, the mission operators are skipping past a number of important tests and going straight to storing the sample for return to avoid losing more.

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